Kick in-app reporting to the kerb: How brands can genuinely measure marketing success

Think back to the last thing you bought online. What drove you to make that purchase? Was it an ad you saw? Maybe a friend’s recommendation, or maybe a review that stuck with you? But if asked to credit them for the purchase in order of importance, could you? I doubt I could accurately. 

For marketers, though, assigning credit to purchase drivers is the billion-dollar question. And yet, despite its importance, the methodology many businesses rely on, in-app attribution, is woefully inadequate. 

In fact, relying on in-app attribution is like celebrating the summit while forgetting the climb. In-app models, which capture only their own digital interactions, miss the messy, multi-touch path consumers take before a purchase. With today’s consumer journeys spanning multiple devices and locations, accurately assigning credit to any one platform is nearly impossible. 

Furthermore, privacy requirements and increased regulations – iOS updates and the phase-out of third-party cookies, for example – weaken in-app attribution even more, meaning we struggle to track users accurately across the journey. 

Despite this lack of visibility, many agencies still rely on platform-based metrics from Google Ads or Facebook, often treating them as a single source of truth. But these metrics are only one piece of the puzzle. To gain a full picture, brands must move beyond these narrow data points and focus on metrics rooted in their own business intelligence. 

Having a clear grasp of business data is obviously important for every brand, but it’s an absolute non-negotiable for SMEs and challengers trying to succeed in digital advertising as they need to make every dollar invested count.  

To truly understand what aspect of marketing is driving results, we need a broader and more honest way to measure success. One that considers every interaction that goes into a conversion, instead of channel-centric measurement. And agencies have both an opportunity and responsibility to act as trusted partners to facilitate this shift. 

An agency’s role has now evolved beyond the transactional towards the educational and consultative. By empowering clients with a holistic measurement framework that prioritises their own data, and integrating metrics that reflect real business numbers such as lifetime value and profit margins, we can help them focus on what is truly important. 

When we work with clients to set realistic business benchmarks, such as customer acquisition costs and media efficiency ratios, agencies can help brands understand whether their marketing efforts are actually contributing to profitable growth, regardless of what the ad platforms say. Doing so fosters transparent, honest relationships where difficult conversations about budget and expectations aren’t avoided but embraced.  

As agencies, we owe it to our clients to be transparent and not make ourselves look good by reporting exclusively from ad platforms. Relying on them not only means we are marketing blindly, but we are risking the health of our clients’ businesses.  

The industry needs a reset, moving away from narrow in-app metrics towards a comprehensive understanding of business performance. This is essential for informed, strategic decision-making in today’s digital landscape. For agencies and brands alike, the time has come to navigate with a full map, giving them a clear and honest picture of their trajectory, and building a partnership based on trust. 

Ash Dharan is head of paid media at NP Digital.